


Stolen

by madeofheart (nerdofthenile)



Series: Oppositestuck [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, How Do I Tag, Mild Language, Oppositestuck, Paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 09:57:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10964889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdofthenile/pseuds/madeofheart
Summary: Her face is pale. Her eyes are shut, glasses nowhere to be seen. Her lips are set and straight. If you didn't know better, you'd think she was already dead.





	Stolen

**Author's Note:**

> HA I HAVE NO LIFE, ALL I DO IS WRITE
> 
> Anyways, I finished this and thought, "meh, why not post it." So here you go, some Oppositestuck angst.

Your name is TEREZI PYROPE, and you look like a mess.

Your reflection in the mirror isn't who you're used to. She's physically like the regular troll you know, with the heart-shaped face and the proportional neck you were gifted with, and the shoulders that have seen too much sunlight. But her hair is a wreck. There are bruises on the joint of her neck and shoulder, you'd fallen in your rush to get here. Also on the way here, she’d lost her earrings, the backs had fallen out. They weren't your good ones, though, thank goodness. And the makeup that took hours to put on is smudged, eyeliner and lipstick askew. You thumb over your lips to try to improve it, but that takes all the energy you have.

You have used up all your energy today.

The mirror you are looking in isn't yours. It's an old mirror in a forgotten block of Eridan’s hive, old and musty and alone. You needed alone, after what had happened. And also to check on how badly you had looked, because you knew you looked disastrous and look at that, you were right.

You decide to try to fix yourself up. You comb your fingers through your hair to try to make it more presentable, being mindful of your claws, which were sharp and had recently been polished. That polish was expensive as hell, and you'd barely made it out alive from the shop you had stolen it from. Or, “borrowed”, as you like to say instead.

You try to make your hair better, but carding through it only does so much. Maybe you should look around for gel or something. Could this block have any? It may be worth searching. So you get up from the three-legged sitting structure you were sitting on and start looking around. The block you had fled to was small, but packed with different types of furniture and storage. Perhaps Eridan’s lusus had moved things around when they had found this place and converted it to a hive. You don't know how a whale lusus moves things around or even fit into the blocks of the hive, but really, it's the lusus of Eridan Ampora. That kid could wink at a broken board and it would fix itself for him.

There are a few cabinets and chests that might hold something for your hair. So you open up a few. Hm. Just some miscellaneous gadgets, very old though, possibly hundreds of sweeps. Some of the bottles are even in an Alternian you can't recognize, much less read. Some books, stored here and there, are barely legible and filled with nonsense information about ship logs and navigation. Hm. Was this a captain's block, once upon a time, when the ship had sailed?

Just your luck, nothing for your hair. You're starting to get a bit discouraged. You've tried all the cabinets and the only thing truly noteworthy you found was old horn polish, dried up beyond use. So you turn to the chests that line the walls of the block. Worst came to worst, you went upstairs again to see if Eridan or Feferi had something.

But they would be busy with--

You shake your head. Not now. Just push it away. There's been enough emotional discord today. 

You open up the first chest and are immediately creeped out. It's full of scrolls, tightly bound, a few splattered with drops of blue, teal, and exactly three drops of olive green. Not a lot, but enough. Out of pure curiosity, you pick up one of the scrolls and untie it from the twine holding it rolled up. The string practically crumbles in your hands, and you open the scroll. It is in a language you can't read at all, not Alternian in the slightest. What language is it? It's made of wispy letters and harsh lines that look like they might be punctuation marks, and dots that appear on top of a few words. What…?

You roll it back up and captchalogue it without really thinking. You are never one to snoop around or search through things, but you are one to steal. This wasn't being used anyway, so you doubt it would be missed. And you're curious about what language it's written in. Seems like a trip to the city manual database is in order. 

The other chests don't yield anything to you. You're about to close the last one and leave when something catches your eye. You glance back at the chest you had just opened. A little package. A tube tucked into the corner of the chest, just so positioned in a place that it would be hard to see. You pick it up. It's solid, and bumpy, wound tightly in a bitten-up cloth covered in dust and what looked like soot.

Hm. It's really not proper social etiquette to be opening a friend's personal belongings. And you don't really know how much of this is Eridan's. But the thief inside you sings a different tune. So you unravel the cloth, fingers working nimbly at it like it was a lock.

Your breath catches in your air tube.

A wand.

It looks identical to Eridan's wand, but bigger. More gnarled. It's nicked in several places, chipped in some. It had clearly been once very white and pristine, but age had withered it into a dull yellowing color that wasn't really discernible.

Very few people could use magic. And it was known to be a genetic thing. And magic users usually had unique weapons in the bloodline, weapon types passed down through ancestral bond. To have another wand that looked almost exactly like Eridan's….

What had you found?

And why was it in Eridan’s hive?

You're knocked from your thoughts at the sound of footsteps coming down the hall, and you think you hear your name. You hurriedly stuff the wand back into its cloth, shove it back into the chest, and snap it closed. 

You knew, subconsciously, that looking around would be a bad idea. You were a thief, not a damn investigator, and you had a place. One day, you'd get that in check. Sooner than that, you'd get your look in check, preferably in the next hour or so. But you couldn't now, which was an embarrassment and shame, since someone was now standing in front of the block entrance with a hand on her hip and sass in her voice.

“Terezi, do I even want to know?”

“I was looking around,” you say evenly, carefully standing and watching Feferi’s face as you do so. “I apologize for snooping. I was looking for hair gel.”

“This isn't my hive, dumbass,” Feferi scoffed, rolling her eyes, “So don't come crawling to me with apologies. Don't need ‘em and don't care about ‘em.”

You nod in response.

Feferi says nothing, pursing her lips and giving you a look of annoyance before sighing loudly. 

“She’s stable and breathing, just sleeping for now,” she finally says, “And Eri has a diagnosis.”

~

“Paralysis?”

You think you may be paralyzed as well, back on the ground level of Eridan's hive, sitting at the table with Feferi leaning on the back of your chair and Equius launched up from his seat, practically foaming at the mouth. You wanted to tell him that it was rude not only to interrupt someone, but to stand up from your seat like that. But you couldn't, even if you wanted to. Your tongue feels like lead.

Eridan, of course, just nods. Even though the seadweller boy is smiling as always, tear tracks are still evident on his face, purple marks of irritation under his visual orbs, not well concealed by his glasses. “Paralysis,” he confirms, “in her upper posture column. It's severed the nerves connected to her arms.”

Silence is heavy in the air. Feferi clenches the back of your chair hard.

Equius isn't stalled by the additional information though. “Are you effing with me, Ampora?”

“No,” Eridan’s voice is barely above a whisper.

“There's a way,” Equius leans back so he's standing at full height, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. The sound of one fist hitting the table causes you to jump, but Feferi stays still. “There has to be a fucking way,” he hisses. 

“Way to what?” Eridan asks.

“Heal paralysis,” Equius says, stepping around his chair and pacing to the wall and then back. “She can't-- there isn't--”

“There is no way,” Feferi bites out behind you. “There's no way. Paralysis is only treatable, and even then there aren't a whole lot of ways to do that.” You feel her hands slipping off the chair. Her words come out clipped.

“Paraplegics are cull game.”

You duck as Equius dashes at Feferi, getting close to her face. “Don't you fucking dare,” he hisses at her. “Don't you even--”

“Even what? Speak some truth?” Feferi pushes him away so now she's in your line of vision, and you can see the start of tears forming in her eyes as well. “Face the fucking music. She's paralyzed. She will never move her arms again. There are no other options. If she wasn't cull bait before, she sure as hell is now!”

“You have to just like your little two sense everywhere, don't you. Just poke it in at the worst times. Like this news isn't still fresh and raw as hell, yet you're gonna rub salt in the freaking wound because you're so special.”

“I’m just stating some of the truth!”

“Truth that can be changed.”

“You can't change facts!”

“Says the hemoanonymous--”

“Please.”

Eridan's voice is steady and assertive. Both Feferi and Equius stop at the sound of his interjection. Feferi’s face flushes, and you can see how she could pass for a violetblood, underneath the skin. You knew she was a mutant, you were one of the few that did. 

“Sorry,” Feferi says. Equius nods in silent apology.

Eridan smiles a bit wider and looks down. “I am not taking sides,” he assures, looking back up and pushing his glasses back up his nose, “but Fef, we cannot lose hope. Technology is an amazing thing, and it's speedy too. We never know when it could ascend to a newer height, maybe even to the point of helping the paralysis-inflicted.” He shrugs. “Keep the faith!”

You don't know how you could keep the faith when even you know Feferi is right. Your airways seize up as the realization of what you have just learned sets in. It is a cullable offense to be paralyzed. She’d never be able to make it to Ascension without being found out. The useless were killed on sight, you learned that from wrigglerhood. Technology would have to move in the next four sweeps if she'd ever live. And then again, she'd have to survive those four sweeps too. The odds were impossibly against her. 

It was only when Eridan's hand was swiping along your cheek that you realized you were crying.

“Hey,” he said, “we’re here.” You gulp in a bubble of air you didn't know you needed, and realized that Feferi was sitting on the table now, defeated and staring anywhere but at you, and Equius was on the other side of the room, looking out the window with an unreadable expression on his face. When had Eridan come up next to you? When had he turned you so he could face you properly? Was time even a thing? You don't know. All you know is that your best friend is in the next room over, and that her life is over even though she's still breathing.

Eridan, ever the mind-reader-know-it-all-perfect-specimen of a troll, rubs your cheek (it's on the verge of a pap but it isn't) and says in a hushed, calming tone, “Would you like to see her?”

No. No, you don't. Don't want to see her prone body on some healer’s slab, looking dead, could be dead, would be dead, and soon. But you nod anyway.

Eridan leads you off, leaving Equius and Feferi alone, to either bicker or sink in the quiet, you don't know. You are led down the corridor, though it seems like you're turning mindlessly down passageway after passageway. It's all numb. You don't know when the shock will leave, don't know if it will. All you know is that your friend, basically, is on death row.

And it's not her fault at all.

Finally, Eridan stops at a door. It's plastered in faded drawings, scratches, the remains of a wrigglerhood long gone. He slowly inches the door open, letting the light from the hallway light bulbs expose the block.

Your best friend, Vriska Serket, lays on a healer’s slab.

Her skirt is flowy as ever, stupidly loose, pooling to her sides. Her shoes had been taken off, but once Eridan flicks the lights on you can see they've been put off to the side, little flats the color of the ocean. Instead of the t-shirt she usually wears, she's wearing a special appendage brace and a blank black tank top, her arms pinned out, like a flutterbeast for examination. Her hair, usually wound tightly in a braid, is long and careless on her head, pillowing the surface beneath her, even with the snuggleplane already there to do that job.

Her face is pale. Her eyes are shut, glasses nowhere to be seen. Her lips are set and straight. If you didn't know better, you'd think she was already dead.

You're in a trance, walking up and dropping to her side. You half expect her to pop up and laugh at you and say she knew it, she didn't even see you coming, you were an awesome spy, you should be a spy for the Empire someday and go on cool missions like Troll James Bond did, and OMG, you'd even rock a tuxedo. But she doesn't. She lies there, still as a corpse, the only sign of life in her the slow ride and fall of her oxygen pumps.

You're trembling. You rest a hand on hers.

“She is alive,” Eridan says, and you'd almost forgotten he was there, “she is alive, and that in itself is something to be thankful for.”

“This is worse than death,” your voice comes out weaker than you wanted it to.

“Is it?” Eridan counters, “she'll have chances again, experiences again. It won't be as short as you think.”

“She’ll be culled,” you answer, “she’ll be seen as useless and culled, and even up to those final days she won’t be able to do much of anything on her own anymore.” You start running your hand up her arm and down again. You used to draw on these. Draw pictures like you were giving her tattoos. And then she’d do the same for you. Later, she’d be doodling hearts and crabs in bright red on your forearms, just to tease you, and you'd smack her off because one, red is ugly, and two, she was definitely implying about Karkat and you were embarrassed about Karkat (you still are). You would retaliate by drawing little diamonds and fish on her arms, just to tease about her pale crush on Eridan, until you couldn't tease that way because they actually became moirails.

It hits you that you wouldn't be able to do that again because she would never feel it.

Eridan clicks his tongue. “There are ways around culling, contrary to popular belief.”

He comes to stand next to you. His head cocks to the side, and he stares down at Vriska. “She looks peaceful, asleep.”

You nod.

“Then again, she looks perfect awake, too.”

He doesn't say anything else after that. You'd admit anyway that Vriska was lucky to have him in a quadrant.

You tentatively touch Vriska's face and notice a cut. It's been bandaged, clearly Eridan's doing, but the bandage is tainted cerulean blue. Blood. 

“How'd she get that?” You ask, tracing it.

“I believe she got it when she was pushed,” Eridan says, as if this was not a startling fact.

“What?”

“When she was pushed?” He repeats, “off the cliff?”

You shake your head. You don’t understand. “What do you mean, pushed? I thought she fell.”

Eridan seems to realize you don't know what he is talking about. His smile fades to a faint grin. For him, it is the equivalent of frowning.

“She was pushed, Rezi,” he says, “we don't know the full story, a course, but what we do know is that she was pushed.”

You stand.

“Again, we don't know everything fully,” he continues, “and I don't want to pin anything on anyone--”

“Who,” you state, your voice flat as your line of patience, “pushed her.”

Eridan studies you like you are a book before answering. He speaks in a hushed tone and whispers the name of the devil.

“Tavros, we think.”

You are out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew.
> 
> I hope you all are enjoying this as much as I am, this is fun to write! I have ideas laid out for the next few parts, but I will of course take requests on who's perspective I should do next. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you all have a nice day!


End file.
